


The Other Side Of Me

by Sashataakheru



Category: The Move RPF
Genre: Alternate Timelines, Asexual Character, Community: story_works, FTM, FTM Pregnancy, M/M, Mpreg, Multi, POV First Person, Poly triad, Pregnancy, Threesomes, chosen families, poly families, trans fic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-05-14
Updated: 2018-05-14
Packaged: 2019-05-06 22:18:45
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,279
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14657364
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Sashataakheru/pseuds/Sashataakheru
Summary: Leaving a band at the height of their fame to go and have a baby might seem like a terrible decision, but for Bev, it's all he's ever wanted.





	The Other Side Of Me

**Author's Note:**

> Written for the story_works mpreg challenge. Finally using up an old WIP idea I've had in my head for years, but could never find an AU to fit it into, so. Now it's finally done. Set late 1978/9-early 1981/2. Ish. As a range. Timing-wise, Bev leaves ELO just after Out of the Blue and decides, fuck it, I'm done with all this, I wanna go have babies. And so he does.

It's hard to think about now, so long after it happened. I still can't believe we got away with it, but perhaps they just didn't want to see, so they didn't. My face didn't change that much - or so I thought. I just put dresses on, but somehow, they didn't notice. Or didn't want to notice. Given how well-known I was by the time I left the band, it surprised me.  
  
But perhaps they just weren't looking for a pregnant lady, so they thought they'd seen someone else. Perhaps it was for the best. I mean, that was the reason I did it in the first place, to blend in. Pregnancy became a disguise.  
  
We spent a long time planning this child. Ace was just so scared, for me, for the child, for how it would look, for how he would react to it all. I knew I'd be fine, but I was worried about him too. To see me transition back to female in his eyes, to bear a child, what would that do to him? Would it set back any progress he'd made over the past decade? We didn't know, and our doctors knew it was uncharted territory. None of us had done this before. Who knew what effect all those hormones would have on my body? What would I look like at the end of it?  
  
We hadn't planned it that way, though. If we hadn't had Ace around, Charlie and I would have just kept trying until we succeeded. Instead, for the sake of Ace's sanity, we told our doctors, and they weaned me off testosterone, and made sure my cycle was working properly before they would dare to let us try. Ace made sure his doctor knew, too, and got some extra support, just in case he needed it.  
  
We spent hours in meetings with all our doctors, trying to figure out the management plan we would need. Whether I would carry on as a normal woman and go through the system just the way I was, or if we would arrange it all through them, and only use doctors who would be alright dealing with a transsexual pregnancy. As long as I had doctors who knew what they were doing and weren't going to discriminate, I was happy. But it was never going to be that simple.  
  
What the birth procedures would be took a long time to work out, too. They weren't sure how much my body would change during pregnancy, nor how big the baby would be, so no one could say if it would be possible for me to have a natural birth, or if I would need a cesarian. That was probably the hardest discussion to have for me, because it brought home what pregnancy would really mean. It wasn't just having a baby, it would be physically demanding, and somehow, that baby would have to come out of me. I had pelvic exams, ultrasounds, all kinds of things to see what would be the best option, but no decision was made. They said they'd know by the time I was ready to give birth, which could be years away. They didn't know how long it might take me to fall pregnant either, nor if I could even carry a baby to term. Much as I sometimes hated the uncertainty, I did appreciate their honesty. Sometimes, the answer really was, 'I don't know'. Because no one had done this before.  
  
I was introduced to a midwife right from the beginning, and my doctor must have got lucky, because she was incredible. Her name was Carrie, and she was accepting of us all, she was comfortable treating me as I was, and she was queer, too, only she used to be a man. I would never have guessed, but midwifery was her calling, and she wanted to be there for those who might slip through the system. People like me. She was honest and kind, and never held back. She was there for us every week. She became like family, and I couldn't have done it without her.  
  
As for Ace, he wanted no part of the discussions. He couldn't deal with the micromanagement of it all, of all the decisions that needed to be made, of how much focus there was on my body, my female body, of how he sometimes felt we were being encouraged to do things in private, so we weren't just normal people, but transsexual people. Doing weird things we weren't meant to be doing. I didn't really blame him for thinking that, though. I thought that too. There was a daft suggestion to set up a private wing in the gender clinic for us to use, so we wouldn't need to mix with the public hospital space, but we'd be so far away from operating theatres and the obstetrics ward that it just felt pointless if I couldn't do a natural birth and needed a cesarian. In some ways, I thought it was a bit much, but it's not like it had been tried before. They wanted to know if it was still possible, to see how reversible the effects of testosterone were on a woman's body.  
  
I think my diary only ever knew the true extent of how I coped with all of that, though. I'd been on testosterone for so long, for most of my adult life, that I'd just grown used to it, but I hadn't needed to change my body as badly as Ace did. I didn't mind.  
  
I wasn't expecting many physical changes. Testosterone had some irreversible effects that we didn't know about when I first started taking it, so it wasn't like I was going to transform back into a woman. Pregnancy wouldn't do that to me. My natural cycle wouldn't do that to me, either. I would still look like a man, just one with a growing belly. Or so my doctors theorised, though none of us knew for sure what would happen, because it hadn't been done before. They'd helped transsexual people transition one way, but there just weren't any who had wanted to transition back the other way. This was brand new territory.  
  
And they were right. It's fair to say a lot of things didn't change when I went off testosterone and started getting my cycle back. My voice didn't change. My appearance in general didn't really change all that much, either. I'd always looked a little feminine anyway, so most of what I noticed was a little more fat around my hips, and perhaps my face softened a little. I did notice the change in sex drive, and I definitely smelt different. My moods took about three months to really level off. I cried a lot, though I don't know if it was the hormones, or just feeling like I didn't have to perform masculininty anymore, and I didn't need to just keep it all to myself.  
  
I think the strangest thing was not having breasts. I'd had mine removed a long time ago, and they weren't going to grow back. They did offer to give me implants, to make it feel more real, but I declined. I didn't want major chest surgery that would only be temporary, since I didn't want to keep them. So I just padded some bras instead, and used those to fill out my figure when I wore dresses. Carrie was so very helpful for that, as she'd had to learn to dress like a woman, to pass as one, so I took all her advice on how to make it look natural. She taught me how to carry myself, too, to stop walking like a man, and to begin to act like a woman. If I was going to not just be pregnant, but pass as a woman to do so, I needed to be convincing, and she made sure it was.  
  
It's funny, you have this idealised thing in your head, where you imagine you go off your testosterone, get your cycle back, then it's just a matter of getting pregnant, and it's all plain sailing from there. I dreamed of it all, and how easy it would be. I imagined the transformation was a lot more perfect than it really was. Because female hormones were never going to just turn me back into a woman, not like that. I wasn't suddenly going to become this shapely, curvy woman with breasts, who would never be read as male. It was never going to be like that.  
  
And yet it still surprised me at how much it did change me, and how, after even nine months of being off testosterone, there wasn't much trace of the man I used to be, not anymore. It still took, perhaps, a year and a half to really feel comfortable being read as a woman, and not worry they were seeing a man. Instead, I was more worried that they would recognise me as me, that I used to be that famous drummer from that bad, and they would stare at me and wonder why on earth I was a woman, which is a problem my doctors could not solve.  
  
As much as we wanted it, though, it was far from easy. Once my body was prepared, it took us 18 months to conceive. In a way, it was a blessing, because I was able to do some radio work between then, just as a way to keep myself busy. Being around other people somehow managed to calm me, and stopped me thinking about the disappointment. It helped me practice just being me, while still being able to present as male. Those days where it got too much, I just cried into Charlie's arms when I got home. Perhaps not the ideal coping mechanism, but better than outing myself in public. It was hard living a double life like that, and not something I had ever considered before I started walking down this path.  
  
It wasn't that I didn't want people to know I was transsexual. It was - I guess I felt it was the easier option, to hide in plain sight. If I was going to grow a belly for a while, and then suddenly lose it nine months later, well, I just thought that would look suspicious. I didn't want to be a man while I was pregnant. It was hard enough just being transsexual in public, it was hard enough being famous, but to throw pregnancy into that mix, no. Society wasn't ready for any of that. So it was my choice to hide as a woman instead. It's not like my name wasn't heavily coded as female by then either.  
  
I still don't know how I got away with it, though. I thought for sure it would be obvious at some point, and I would be outed, all because I just really wanted a baby. Someone would recognise me, someone would hear my voice and know who I was when I was out there with a growing belly. But it never happened. Even when I felt my face looked way too feminine around people I knew, I just brushed it off to anyone who asked as the result of being able to just stay at home and relax, which was partly true. Most people could kind of get that touring just stresses you out, and stress ages you, and you get very drunk a lot, so without that, I looked happier and healthier. And perhaps that was also true, as much as anything else. I certaintly felt a lot better, so it was a useful excuse, at any rate.  
  
Throughout it all, Ace and Charlie were by my side. We caught up with Trev, and perhaps out of boredom, or possibly nostalgia, we formed a band. We didn't want anything big. We didn't want to lose ourselves to the band the way we might've when we were younger. I think we just wanted to play together again. Perhaps that was the riskier option, to go back to what I was known for, to be in public, on stage, in front of everyone all over again. But perhaps they were enough of a distraction that I could hide up the back again, and the irregularity of our gigs meant no one expected us to play. No one had to see me pregnant then.  
  
Man, it was weird seeing Trev again though. It'd been so long, but he was still the same as he'd ever been. Older, wiser, but still Trev. We weren't sure if he'd be okay with Ace, even Ace wasn't sure either, but after a few tenative meetings, they both seemed to be best friends again. I was really happy about that. I think Trev being clean helped. Ace certainly seemed to enjoy having Trev around again, too. I don't know if they were ever lovers, Ace never really discussed that with us, but as long as they were both happy, we were happy to have him around.  
  
We had to buy a bigger house after that. We needed a spare room for the baby, but we also needed a room for Trev. We hadn't planned to let him move in with us, but it just ended up being easiest for all of us, and Ace didn't want to be apart from him. Trev did think it was a bit weird that we were trying for a baby, and that I was occasionally prancing around the house in summer dresses, but it was hardly the weirdest thing we got up to, and Trev seemed to relish the chance to be a father, a proper one this time. There'd been a girl a long time ago, though he barely remembered her name anymore, but he wasn't in any mood to parent back then. He'd run away and left her instead. Now, he was ready to embrace it.  
  
Ace insisted on somewhere small and quiet. Somewhere rural. I think he'd had enough of the city, and to be honest, I liked the idea of us being all together out in the middle of nowhere, away from prying eyes. Sometimes, crowds are useful to hide in, but sometimes, it's safer to be on your own. We looked all over the place until we found the perfect house, in a village close enough to Brum that we could still manage gigs, but far enough away we were on our own.  
  
It was a nice house, too. Modern, but within our price range, and with a decent yard. No pool, but seven bedrooms, and enough privacy to keep out anyone who wanted to spoil things. In some ways, it really wasn't to my taste at all, but Trev swore he'd renovate the place, just to keep himself busy. He always did like working with his hands. I think it helped him feel like he was a part of this family, too, while Charlie and I were trying for a baby. He and Ace could renovate the house and make it look better so we didn't need to do that.  
  
That was when things really began to fall into place, and I suspect that's what made conception easier. Charlie and I had been trying for months with no result. I'd tried to keep track of my cycle the way my doctor had told me to do, but it didn't seem to help. Trev offered to help, too, but we wanted to just keep at it for a while longer. Besides, I was growing to enjoy having sex with Charlie that way.  
  
It had been very strange at first. I'd never been adverse to that kind of sex, but rarely let anyone fuck me that way, because I knew I could still potentially get pregnant, so I avoided it wherever possible. But now it was our preferred way, and yeah, it was weird. I don't think either of us really knew what we were doing. Charlie's always been into guys, but Ace has never wanted sex, so I don't think they ever did it much, and I never wanted to have sex that way. So it took us a while to figure out what worked best, and what felt good. Charlie insisted it had to feel good, and I appreciated it, because there were times when I felt incredibly vulnerable, and having to have sex like that to make a baby, not for pleasure, didn't sit well with my mind.  
  
My lowered sex drive didn't help, because it wasn't like I was just being a woman now, but trying for a baby, and that required sex. It took me a while to get over that. There were moments when I just wanted him to get it over with, just get it done, fuck me hard, come inside me, let's see if it works this time. He didn't mind, and he never took offense when I asked him to just be quick and get it done. He knew this was hard for me, and it was hard for him, too, particularly once I began living more permanently as a woman, at least while we were trying.  
  
The fact that it took so long didn't help, either. It just wore me out. Not just the sex, but all of it, really. All of the exams, and appointments, and fertility tests, and everything else that just made it all exhausting. I might've celebrated more than I did, but I honestly just felt relieved. I'd wanted it so badly, but it had taken everything out of me. If this one failed, who knew how long it might take to succeed again? I didn't want to think about it. All I had to do now was carry it to term, and that would be precarious enough. I didn't want to think about trying again. I didn't want to go through all this again if it didn't work this time.  
  
Perhaps, if it had been easier, I could've coped with trying again. I did think about it. I wondered whether I would miscarry, or the baby would be stillborn, and we'd have to keep trying. I wondered how women did it, how they coped with the struggle to conceive. Did it tax them the way it taxed me? Did they just deal with it and get on with life? I never dared ask, to be honest, because I think I was afraid of what I might hear. I didn't want to feel like a failure for not being able to deal with this the way women did. I was born to do this, I had all the right equipment, it wasn't like I was an imposter. I didn't want to think my body had failed me.  
  
I didn't really believe it until I started showing. Then I believed all the pregnancy tests, and the blood tests, and all the other things that confirmed I was indeed pregnant. There, that little swelling, that small round belly that proved I was pregnant, that this was really happening. I think I stared at my body for over an hour when I first noticed. I had never been one for that kind of vanity, but I think I needed to really believe it, to touch my belly, to see that roundness, to really understand what I'd signed up for. I ... think I was happy? But I think I was also just curious. I'd wanted this for so long, and now it was happening. There was a baby inside me, one Charlie and I had created together. It was our baby. Ours. No one could take that away from us. I smiled at that thought. Sure, I might still legally be female, but that just meant the baby would have a mother and a father on the birth certificate.  
  
But then I thought about its sex. Boy or girl, they were the only options, right? Did I want to impose that on a child? Our child? Perhaps the odds were it would be perfectly happy with whatever gender it was given, but what if it wasn't? Ace and I talked a lot about that. He carried too much trauma from his own childhood that he didn't want to repeat on this new baby, but he was also afraid instinct would take over, that he'd just repeat the same damn mistakes. He was afraid that we'd just fall back into the same patterns of defining our child by their genitals, because that's what everyone else would do. That'd we'd just end up supporting the system, rather than protecting them from it.  
  
None of us were under the impression parenting would be easy, and we weren't tricking ourselves into thinking it was. But I knew Ace had nothing to worry about. He was far too gentle, too aware of what not to do, to charge through and do the same things all over again. Ace had always been a gentle soul, it was always there if you cared to look. The tough guy act was all about self-preservation, survival, doing what he had to do not to get beaten up. Underneath, he was the sweetest man you could possibly know, and you didn't need to dig far to find it.  
  
I think he surprised himself, too. He was so worried he would find it too strange to see me the way I was, to see my body changing, that he would freak out about it. But we'd been helping him prepare for it ever since we decided to start trying. He'd been working through it with his own doctors, too. He had support if he needed it. But he never did.  
  
That day, when I first began to show, it was Ace who saw it first before Charlie did. I think that's when he believed it was real. He came up to me, smiling, grinning like an idiot, and he just asked if he could touch my belly, as if I might object after all these years.  
  
"We made a baby, oh, wow," he whispered, and his voice was just so full of awe and amazement and love.  
  
He just touched my belly, gently rubbed it with his hands, and he did that throughout the rest of the pregnancy. I came to find that very comforting, to know he wanted this baby, too, as much as I did. When the morning sickness got too much, there he was, rubbing my belly. When I just needed comforting, he was there. Sometimes, he apologised, like he wasn't doing enough, but his presence was all I needed.  
  
"We sure did. Are you happy?" I asked.  
  
"Oh, yeah, very much. Bit scared, but. Happy. You feeling alright then? It's not kicking yet, is it?" Ace asked.  
  
"Not quite yet, it's a bit soon for that. We're going to have to start thinking about how to set up the nursery. And how we're going to get a baby to sleep around our schedules. It's not like we've ever kept regular hours," I said.  
  
"Rock'n'roll babies, yeah. They just live with it, I think. Imagine us trying to take him on tour, yeah? That'd be mad," Ace said.  
  
"I dunno, she might really love that, you never know," I said.  
  
Ace hugged me then. "We gonna give her a gender then or?"  
  
"I think we just let her be whatever she wants to be. Let's give her the childhood we never had, yeah? The one we wish we'd had, not the one we were given. Who knows? Maybe things'll get better for her by the time she's an adult. Maybe she won't need to hide like we did," I said.  
  
"Maybe he won't. That'd be awesome. Imagine what fun that kid's gonna have with us as parents, yeah? I always did get along with kids. Same wavelength or something, I think. Dunno. So're you gonna wear more dresses now? I'd like to see you in a dress, I reckon," Ace said.  
  
I couldn't really say no. I'd been slowly picking up a few dresses and other pieces of women's maternity clothing, figuring out how best to present myself as a woman in public and not be recognised and accommodate my changing body. I found sunglasses and make-up to be particularly effective, as well as growing my hair out. I hadn't expected it to get as long as it had, but with feminine styling, it was too hard to see the man I used to be under all of that.  
  
I was beginning to enjoy it, too. Men were never allowed to pamper themselves the way women got to do. There was just something so thrilling, so beautiful, about being able to just take care of myself the way I'd never been able to do before. To cry, to just let those emotions out of my system. Masculinity, while more closely aligned with how my brain felt, had deprived me of a lot of things I had come to find very useful, and it was strange to navigate the world this way, in this new skin, learning how to be a woman for the first time.  
  
It took a lot of practice, and I was never quite perfect at it, because I lived in two masks. I was never quite able to just be a woman, or just a man. I had to be both, though only until I began showing. After then, it was too hard to hide my pregnant body, so I just never bothered. I was glad I never had any work to do except be pregnant. Ace and Charlie took care of the rest. They worked, while I took care of myself. That was nice. It was really nice. After so long of just stress and touring and not being home and being unable to relax, now, my time was my own, and I was going to make the most of it.  
  
My mother was around a lot. I doubt I would have coped without her. She was there when I needed her, when I wasn't sure I could go through with it. She sat me down and reconnected me with myself. I also think she was just secretly happy to have her daughter back, and the chance to have grandchildren. But I don't hold that against her. She was always so good to me, when I was a girl, when she let me become a boy, and when I went around as a man for so many years. She was always there, supporting me.  
  
I never figured out how to repay her for all the help she gave me. While Charlie and Ace were away, she was there, taking me to classes, to appointments, to all the things normal pregnant women did to prepare for the birth. She grounded me.  
  
I needed that, because the birth was ... stressful. I'd been prepared for it, that wasn't a surprise. We all knew what would happen. But it's one thing to know it in your head, and another to go through it. I'd had ultrasounds all throughout my pregnancy, as they tried to ascertain whether I should have a cesarian by default, or if I should attempt a natural birth. After all, it wasn't like I hadn't been born with all the right pieces of equipment for a natural birth. It was just a matter of seeing whether my pelvis would cope with it.  
  
They didn't know if I'd started testosterone before my pelvis had grown to its proper female size, like it would have done if I'd waited to transition as an adult, or if we'd interrupted it by starting as soon as we had. Given the situation I was in, my doctor didn't want to delay it. She wanted me to keep up with my peers, so I would blend in, and no one would ever know. And that's what happened. I blended in. No one ever suspected I was born female. We got it at just the right time, so I grew into a boy just like my friends did. But it might have cost me the chance of a natural birth, something I'd never considered doing back then.  
  
The original plan was to give birth in hospital, but the logicistics of it all, of trying to figure out how to treat me, and if any doctors would assist me in my birth without prejudice, that they weren't sure of. In the end, Carrie insisted she could deliver the baby at home, in a pool of water, and proved she could do it by delivering three babies at home belonging to other queer couples. That convinced them to let me have a home birth. Which was a relief, as I didn't really want to go to hospital if I could avoid it. Here, I could be around the people I loved, and not worry about being found out.  
  
The baby was small, but healthy. I had managed to carry a baby to term. I didn't know how I was going to give birth until the last minute. They wanted to be absolutely sure I could give birth at home without complications before allowing me to do so, or I'd be in the hospital like every other mother, where I'd have a cesarian instead.  
  
The not knowing, and not being able to prepare, that was the hardest part. I had ultrasounds every two days, just to be sure. If the baby wouldn't come out, if my pelvis wouldn't allow it, it could put both of us at risk. I didn't have a preference either way. I just wanted it to be done. I just reasoned it would be preferable to know in advance if I needed to go to hospital, so we didn't risk being treated by doctors who didn't know our situation.  
  
The news came through early one morning that I had been cleared for a home birth, which was lovely. I hadn't really wanted to go to hospital if I could avoid it, but by that afternoon, I was too concerned with contractions and labour to be able to focus on much at all. They had made a decision just in time. Any later, and we'd have been in trouble. I just trusted Charlie and Trev and Ace and Carrie knew what to do, and let them just get on with it.  
  
I don't remember much of it, really. There was a lot of pain, which the birthing pool didn't really help with as much as I'd have liked. I wasn't sure I could do it. I was surrounded by them, I had my beautiful midwife ready to help, my mother was even there, whispering gently to me that I could do it. But I don't really remember the details.  
  
Everything hurt, and labour took a long time. Mum said it was over ten hours, but honestly, it's mostly just a blur of pain and water and exhaustion. All I know is that I got a baby at the end of it, somehow, when I thought I had no energy left, and wanted to just give up and let go. To stop pushing and pushing and give up, because I had nothing left.  
  
But then Ace touched my belly, gently rubbing it like he'd always done, and all he said was, "Just one more push, Bev, c'mon, you can do it."  
  
And for whatever reason, I don't even know how, I found that extra energy I needed, and finally, it was all over. The baby was born. Every muscle in my body relaxed in the warm water once I knew it was done. And then there was this baby in my arms, naked and pink and smiling and half-asleep, and nothing compared to that moment. Nothing.  
  
I was just overwhelmed. I kissed that tiny head, and whispered a hello, and then I just wept. This wasn't just any baby, this was my baby. My body made this baby. It gave birth to this baby. Me and Charlie, we made this baby together. We'd actually done it.  
  
I couldn't stop staring at my baby's face. Even days later, when I was still recovering, I just wanted to see that face, to be reassured it had happened. Because there were moments when I didn't believe it. But my body had the scars to prove it now. The only thing I was disappointed by was the fact I couldn't breastfeed. My breasts had swelled a little, but there was no tissue left to regrow them. It was all mostly just fat. There were no milk glands. I had to watch my little baby try to latch on, to do what babies naturally want to do, but there was nothing there. At least I had a reason why I couldn't do it, but it still hurt. It felt like the most natural thing in the world to do, but I couldn't do it.  
  
It took us a week to choose a name. We didn't want anything obviously gendered so our child wouldn't need to have a name that didn't fit if they turned out trans like Ace and me. Maybe we were being overly cautious, but we knew how we'd grown up, and we didn't want that for our kid. Ace in particular didn't want a gendered name. He'd had enough of being referred to by the wrong name, and he was sure it might've been easier if it hadn't been so obviously feminine.  
  
We had a lot of arguments about that. Not bad ones, but we didn't want to give our kid a name that would get them teased. We didn't want to make life harder for them by giving them a gender neutral name. It's not like there was a guarantee they would turn out trans, so what would it matter if we named it for its sex? But Ace and I were both adamant that we didn't want to repeat the mistakes our parents had made. And it was always possible to change the name later if they wanted something else that better suited them. We all vowed to let them do that, to name themselves if and when they wanted to, and to change it for them. We wouldn't make it hard for them to be who they wanted to be.  
  
In the end, we settled on Arlie. Arlie Tree Bevan. It was the only one we could agree on. Ace suggested Arlie, because it was like Charlie, but it started with an A, and I don't know if he'd read it somewhere, but he just liked the sound of it. I think he also just really wanted to name the baby after Charlie, but didn't want to have two Charlies in the house. Tree was Trevor's suggestion, and it was the only one that actually sounded good. But they all insisted the baby had to have my surname, since I'd done all the work bringing it into the world.  
  
It feels weird to talk about, because it's so daft giving a name to a child and hoping they might love it the way you love it. Ace and I knew that wasn't true, that sometimes, you had to name yourself. We wanted to be careful with the name, given our own backgrounds. Ace had changed his name as soon as he could, but I'd never bothered, because I was happy to be Bev. So much of my transition came in the aftermath of my father's death, so to turn my back on my name, on his name, wasn't something I ever wanted to do.  
  
But this kid would grow up in a world vastly different to the one we grew up in. They would have parents who weren't like the rest, who didn't do what society did. I'd heard all the stories, of the kids of queers turning queer themselves, but perhaps it was just that they were exposed to it from birth, rather than trying to discover it for themselves, if they knew it was what they really were. And maybe it would be easier now, when things weren't quite so hidden the way they used to be. It wasn't illegal to be gay anymore. That alone was mindblowing to us, given how we'd grown up.  
  
About a month after the birth, we had one of those long nights, where we talked until dawn, trying to figure out how to raise a kid between the four of us, and how to protect them from people who might want to hurt them, or tease them. Because in spite of how much things had improved, it wasn't like the stigma had gone away. Being parents was hard enough. Being queer parents, that was a much bigger challenge.  
  
We still don't really know what we're doing most of the time. Mostly, it's just taking care of our kid, and making sure we're still making enough to get by. But with the four of us, that's a lot easier to handle now. Charlie's had some good gigs recently, and Trev's playing sessions all over town. Once a month, we all get together and play in our local, and our kid sleeps backstage in my mother's arms. Perhaps it's not the life normal parents might want, but we're not normal, and that's fine with us. This is the life we want now, just me and Ace and Charlie and Trev, and the baby I gave birth to lying in my arms. I'd never give up this life for anything. This is all I've ever wanted, and I'm glad it's mine.


End file.
